Tuesday, 2 August 2016

Sewing stripes with myfabrics

You might have seen over on Instagram, I have been busy sewing up a storm and making all the jersey dresses recently. Finding interesting prints in jersey fabric is not that easy but I have been searching tirelessly and compiling a list that I will be sharing soon. Good job I am an expert shopper hey! One of my recent discoveries is Myfabrics.co.uk so I was excited when they got in touch asking to collaborate. I had already gotten lost in their vast selection of jersey and purchased various colours of bargain ribbing along with the elastic recommended to me by Daisy Crumpet as being the best clear elastic she has found. I can concur, the elastic is great and far superior to the stuff I was buying on eBay.

I finally managed to decide on three lengths of jersey and a pack of elastic. The items were shipped promptly and take a couple of days to arrive from Germany. All three fabrics are a lovely quality and came out of the pre-wash looking as good as they did going in. I've never actually taken the time to measure before and after pre-wash to see how much shrinking occurs, maybe it is something I will make a note to try and remember to do. Ignoring the last couple of days (I'm back in a sweater dress!) we have actually had something resembling Summer so I decided to make up the turquoise stripes and leave the other two fabrics for later in the year.

For this Lady Skater dress I raised the front neckline up and scooped out the back. I can't really have scooped front and back with sleeves as I have tiny shoulders and spend most of my time pulling it back up my shoulders, so annoying! I went with chevron stripes on the skirt again as I think it looks much better this way than cutting the stripes horizontally on a circle skirt. It is a bit of a faff and takes more brain power but the end result is worth it. I use a seam tape to stabilise my hems and decided to give it a go when lining up the stripes on the skirt and see how it fared over pins and it is now my go to method, so much quicker with very little movement when sewing, result! With stripes I always sew the seam on my sewing machine first before moving to the overlocker as my overlocker likes to move the start of the fabric no matter how tightly I try to hold it together.

(ignore the redness, I had sat with my back to the sun for a whole five minutes!)

I sew them in flat rather than as a band and haven't ever ended up short, any excess gets trimmed away when I close the seam. I measure the new neckline then times the CM by 0.9 to get a rough idea of the length required but it all depends on how stretchy your knit is. Hope that helps!

* DISCLAIMER
Some items are provided as samples to review. They are always indicated as such by an astrix (*). This does not impact the quality of the review - I will always give my honest opinion regardless of the source.

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